British street-vendors added hot milk and sugar to the tea and hawked it from London street-corners as "saloop." At that time, strong-smelling plants were believed to have the most medicinal value. In Volpone, Ben Jonson mentions sassafras, along with tobacco, as one of the "Indian drugs."
A somewhat alarming concoction called Godfrey's Cordial was administered to children, to relieve colic or hunger pains. Along with sassafras, molasses, and caraway, this patent medicine reportedly contained both opium and brandy. We can only hope that the amounts of the latter two ingredients were small!
The spicy scent of sassafras may remind you of Hires or A & W--with good reason. The original root beer was made from fermented sassafras and molasses.
Down south, the dried leaves, known as file, still flavor condiments and thicken gumboes. This practice may have originated with African slaves who were accustomed to adding powdered baobab leaves to their soups. (File is legal, since sassafras leaves don't contain safrole.)
Because it resists decay, the wood was used for ships, fenceposts, and railroad ties. Country folks constructed beds from it, as well as chicken roosts, since the strong smell was believed to repel bugs and promote drowsiness. Perhaps that explains why, in Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, the ladies in the cave slept on sassafras boughs.
Those who don't want to run the risk of consuming sassafras might want to try spicewood (lindera benzoin) as an alternative. The flavor is very similar and, as far as I know, lindera has not been banned. But perhaps nobody has tried it on rats yet!
Note: Sassafras flower photo is by James Manhart, leaf photo by Hugh Wilson, and color illustration from Kohler's Medicinal Plants, all courtesy of the Texas Vascular Plant Image Gallery at http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/gallery Black and white illustration is courtesy of the SW School of Botanical Medicine at http://chili.rt66.com/hrbmoore/HOMEPAGE/...
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